Boeing is preparing for the cancellation of the Space Launch System rocket.
Some are arguing for the cancellation after the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 flight. However, there are months of fixes needed for the human rated Orion. The heat shield is not safe. Rushing to get off two more flights will likely cost over $20 billion. It is not just two flights but working to fix and still run the program for about four more years. Costs and delays will continue to increase trying to fix the problems. The current contracts are cost plus contracts. Boeing and the other companies would run more costs through the cost plus program.
I have been calling for the cancellation of Space Launch System for about a decade.
Now we are in a series of government wide cuts which could eliminate a trillion dollars per year of waste and perhaps another trillion of inefficiency. There is no way we get to those cuts and a balanced budget trying to carry on ineffective corporate charity and theft by Boeing.
Lets get real cost effective development of space.
Who cares about Artemis? Angry Astronaut still wants it.
Artemis II and III are upcoming NASA missions aimed at returning humans to the Moon. Here’s what each mission will do:
Artemis II
Artemis II, scheduled for no earlier than April 2026, will be the first crewed mission of the Artemis program. The mission will:
– Send four astronauts on a lunar flyby using the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft
– Test Orion’s life support systems and crew interfaces in deep space
– Perform a “hybrid free return” trajectory, orbiting Earth twice before swinging around the Moon and returning directly to Earth
– Last approximately 10 days
Artemis III
Artemis III, targeted for mid-2027, will be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission will:
– Land two astronauts, including the first woman and person of color, on the Moon’s south polar region
– Conduct up to four spacewalks on the lunar surface
– Perform scientific observations and sample water ice
– Use pre-positioned equipment, including an unpressurized rover for lunar excursions
– Last about 30 days, with approximately one week on the lunar surface
Both missions claim to be crucial steps in NASA’s long-term goals of establishing a sustained presence on the Moon and preparing for future missions to Mars. They are not crucial steps.
Orion Heat Shield Fixes
The Orion heat shield experienced unexpected behavior during the Artemis I mission, with over 100 pits visible in post-flight imagery6. NASA needs to understand and address this issue before Artemis II, which will likely incur additional costs. However, specific cost estimates for these fixes are not provided in the search results.
The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion production and operating costs are estimated at $4.2 billion per launch for the first four Artemis missions, not including $42 billion in formulation and development costs spent over the past years.
Boeing and the others will not get more efficient and watchful of costs. Plus they have shown incompetence and delays.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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If I was an astronaut I would be really afraid to ride on SLS. Especially to land on the moon in this thing. Boeing has poor workmanship and cuts coroners.
And I do not see any reason to panic over the idea of refueling. This would be easier than air refueling which we do every day. They connect, add a small amount of thrust and the fuel runs in. The only problem I can see is leaks causing a cloud of vapor around the craft but moving it around into different orbits might solve that. Another way to to avoid leak clouds is to put an electrostatic charge on the fuel. That way it will be electrically attracted into the tank and even leaks would be more like to find their way into the tank.
JJapanese Proverb
When you are on the wrong train, the longer you stay on the train, the more it will cost you to return.
Too many delays, too little progress, and way too much overrunning the budget. I think it is good for Boeing to have more focus on what they are good at, which is building airplanes and maintaining them, and good for new companies such as Blue Origin, SpaceX, and others to take over and grow.
And last but not least good for taxpayers to not have their money wasted.
One problem no one ever wants to talk about is that starship and new Glenn do not possess the fuel capacity to reach the moon! In order for this to happen we essentially have to create a gas station in LEO that will require a significant number of launches to fuel (anywhere from 4-19). These extra costs and incurrences are never considered when comparing the cost of SLS vs Starship vs New Glenn. The fact is space flight carries many uncertainties that are difficult to put a pricetag on. We sometimes don’t know what we don’t know until we find out we don’t know it. Personally I would like to see the SLS boosters strapped onto SpaceX starship! Now that would be one big rocket!!!!
SLS was a good idea 20 years ago. Now it is completely obsolete. It is like to start production of a new propeller fighter as the backbone of the airforce at the begining of 50´s.
People, it is 2025. The pace of change has begun to accelerate and next wil be at a pace that humans struggle with.
Yes you can ditch SLS and go with the new shiny rocket.
Here is the problem. By the time Starship is human rated & capable of the planned missions – guess what?
AI will be beyond AGI level and we will have much better rockets than starship fully designed and tested in simulation.
What will you do then? Cancel starship and wait for the AI to make the new shinier rockets?
This will keep happening over and over faster and faster.
The current tech will forever be a dinosaur white elephant & that is a simple fact of accelerating progress.
You have to work with what you have got & plan for what you will have.
“You have to work with what you have got & plan for what you will have.”
Yes, like atomic rockets NASA is already working on, as well as others. Refueling Starship 10X, as Angry Astronaut projects, will never happen. Either the risk will be so great for so long that atomic rockets will become ready by then and Starship will look as quaint and outdated as SLS does now, OR it will take so long to develop a refueling station in orbit that can itself be refueled safely and without a crew, that atomic rockets will become ready, OR – and this is the only somewhat likely scenario, because Musk has already promised this, Starship will grow fatter, more like the Von Bruan Mars rocket size, PLUS what Musk hasn’t said, up to 4 boosters will be attached to get Super Starship (my phrase) out of the Go%D&mn Earth energy well, then drop off, reusable or not, so the main rocket can proceed to the Moon.
Now, that will be a friggin huge rocket, far larger than anything ever built. And it will take a slew of environmental and FAA exemptions to be allowed. Musk and Trump are headed this way already, with Musk trying to legally take over the nearby company town, rename it Starbase, while undermining the FAA and persuading Trump to remove it from oversight altogether. Trump may just do this to make sure SOME American rocket can beat China to the Moon. America First! That’s his motto, and he may literally move Heaven and Earth to make it happen.
An addendum:
I don’t know the math behind this, but it might ultimately be cheaper and require less fuel to clear the top of one 3 dozen or so lower 48-state >14,000 foot high mountains, mostly in Colorado, and create a new spaceport there. Such a remote area could be made accessible to large trucks only with a new private road, bypassing most if not all environmental restrictions in the new Trump “environment-lite” administration. It would have marginal but perhaps significant advantages in lower air resistance, lower temperatures (to help prevent overheating), somewhat less fuel needed to get to orbit, less air traffic for the FAA to worry about, little to no need to worry about noise of liftoff, which is deafening for miles around the kind of Super Starship that would be needed to get to the Moon, far less wildlife to worry about.
The disadvantages include: loss of equator-base centrifugal force; no company town, but this could be built quickly in a remote rural area; need to move or hire new personnel in the area; need for surrounding roads and other public infrastructure.
The rocket itself could do a suborbital flight, without boosters, to get form Texas to the new mountain spaceport on its own – no need to truck parts there to reassemble. The spaceship factory could remain in Texas.
List of mountains over 14,000 feet in the U.S.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_of_the_United_States Ignore those in Alaska as too remote and too far north to take advantage of centrifugal boost.
hardware doesn’t move as fast as software.
This is a time of shifting masses and energies.
Anything can happen.
Ideally, the two launches of the SLS would be used to put two nuclear tugs in orbit.
Those two tugs would transform how space, the Moon, and Mars are developed.
Give the Space Force a couple frckn space ships to fly.
A trip and a half to the Moon adds no long term value to the goal of industrializating space.
A Space Force tug giving a ride up in orbit would cut the number of tankers needed to fuel a Mars–bound Starship.
Just like a tug moves freighters in port.
Infrastructure should be the use A-2 and 3 are put to.
Not a few uplifting Instagram selfies.
Again, we don’t HAVE nuclear tugs to put in orbit. Even on an optimistic schedule, we wouldn’t have them for about a decade, and that assumes continued Republican control of government the whole time, because the Democrats would cancel such a program the moment they took control, being radically anti-nuclear.
Look, I like nuclear as much as you, but I’m 66 and want this stuff to happen before I die. So it’s not happening using nuclear rocketry.
Trump’s 78, and he wants all this done before he dies. haha
Actually he wants it all done within his 4 year term, which is great, cause short deadlines are how you get massive progress. NASA would like to spend 4 years on a “feasibility study”.
This was commented first.
Your first response was to my second.
No need to go nuclear…:)
Good Riddance. That thing is the porkious of pork.
I’m all for going back to the moon, and setting up a permanent base there, and expand it over time. But we don’t need SLS for that, that money would be better spent on rockets like Starship & New Glenn, and eventually others like Neutron & Terrain R.